Barton Special Cocktail

Barton Special Cocktail:

• 1 1/2 oz gin
• 1/2 oz apple brandy
• 1/2 oz scotch whisky

Stir with cracked ice and strain into 3 oz. Cocktail glass.

Oof. This is one of those cocktails for someone who likes alcohol. I've kind of touched on it before, but there are a few things that put a "cocktail" apart from a "drink", as commonly imbibed by your typical sorority sister. One of the more....uncompromising detail is that, if you're drinking, you should taste the alcohol. This one definitely passes that test.

A few potential reasons for it. The obvious is, it's alcohol mixed with more alcohol and a bit of water. But besides that, the scotch I'm using definitely isn't the smoothest. Granted, that's 100% by design. Scotch is really hard to mix with in general since it's such a stringent spirit, but great scotch is incredibly smooth. It's also hundreds of dollars. Decent scotch, like what I'm using, is a pretty good middle-ground between taste and dollars, but again, when you're mixing, it's often....fussy. In cocktails. Otherwise it's straight-up manly.

But yes, an intense cocktail. I'm not going to give it full marks because it's a little too much, which is saying something when you've had as much experience with alcohol as I have. But the combination of the smokiness of the scotch and the apple from the apple brandy is really nice, so maybe there's something there, waiting to be discovered....